Analysis of Failure
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
He wrote a play; by day and night
He strove with passion and delight;
Yet knew, long ere the curtain drop,
His drama was a sorry flop.
In Parliament he sought a seat;
Election Day brought dire defeat;
Yet he had wooed with word and pen
Prodigiously his fellow men.
And then he wrote a lighter play
That made him famous in a day.
He won a seat in Parliament,
And starry was the way he went.
Yet as he neared the door of death
They heard him say with broken breath:
'For all I've spoken, planned and penned,
I'm just a wash-out in the end.'
So are we all; our triumphs won
Are mean by what we might have done.
Our victories that men applaud
Are sordid in the sight of God.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEXX FFGG HHXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (60%) Etheree (25%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11011101 11110001 11110101 11010101 01001101 01011101 11111101 01001101 01110101 11110001 11010100 01010111 11110111 11111101 11110101 11011001 111110101 11111111 101001101 11000111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 659 |
Words | 136 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 103 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 20, 2023
- 41 sec read
- 80 Views
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"Failure" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32109/failure>.
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